Tag Archives: teacher life

March 28, 2012 · 10:07 am

Life and how things change sometimes

I was going to ski today.  But then the DH’s car popped a flat, so I need to stay home and deal with it.  Annoying, because this was the main day I had planned to ski (modified plan, original would have been Tuesday and Thursday) this week.  It doesn’t help that I know the slopes will be crazy because of Spring Break…I’m wishing I was skiing in some respects.  But my attitude is changing because my circumstances are changing, in ski bum life, in writing life, in horse life, in work life, in home life.

Much as I’d like to ski and play on the mountain, the reality is, I’m still dealing with a strained back muscle that doesn’t want to heal quickly.  It is improving and getting better, but it’s taking its own sweet time.  I can still ski and ride horse, for example, but riding horse was painful this winter at times and it’s one factor in my going exclusively Western again.  Skiing has been less painful than riding but I have found myself tiring more quickly and feeling colder–a secondary impact but a real one.  The back issue has meant I’m not spending as much time on leg conditioning, and I’m also using legs more than my core to deal with conditions, so the legs tire more quickly.  And the boot liners are probably packing out a little bit, which contributes to ski control issues.  So I’m working harder and tiring more quickly, because I’m less efficient.

Oh well, it’s just the season.  But other changes mean I also have less time to play on the slopes.

For example, my writing life is also changing.  I want to be able to publish as many works this year as I did last year (seven, nonfiction and fiction alike).  That’ll be doable, simply because I am writing special education posts for a psychology blog.  Two of those per month, which means a twice-monthly deadline.  A deadline I control, but a deadline nonetheless.

I also have an invite for an anthology, and I am definitely going to do my best to have a story ready.

Then I have something to send to the Angry Robot open reading, but it needs revision to be more competitive.

And then there’s the Netwalk Sequence, which also needs work and much revision.

Plus I want to develop more political writing outlets as well as more professional writing outlets.  Netwalk and the political pieces will play well into each other, and the professional work will also fit together.

IOW, writing stuff is starting to come together but I need to spend more coherent time dealing with it.  This is the week I had slated to do just that…but here I am, Wednesday, and I’ve not really gotten to setting up the structures I need to make things go well.  So I don’t have time to go play on the slopes.  Needs to be done.

Work is also coalescing.  Let’s just say that I am realizing that perhaps we are starting to piece things back together after the drastic economic cuts of two and a half years ago.  It has been horribly traumatic for all involved–students, staff, community–and only now are we perhaps starting to recover in a small, slight way.  Outsiders really don’t get how horribly severe cuts can impact individual schools.  It takes extraordinary leadership to recover and maintain after such cuts…and if it’s not present, then time gets lost.

Furthermore, I’m realizing how I can apply Interpersonal Neurobiology to my particular educational role.  A lot of what I do well involves small group or one-on-one work with highly defended kids who have either poor school behaviors or poor academic behaviors.  Or both.  In middle school, a lot of time needs to go into coaching these kids and that is a labor-intensive job.  It takes hours, days, weeks, and months to build a foundation of trust and turn things around, time I haven’t had.  It’s not something I’ve been able to do a lot of these past two and a half years, not until now.  I didn’t realize how much I’d missed that intensive level of intervention, and four more hours gave me that time back.

And then there is the preretirement preparation here at home for the DH.  It’s getting to be time to simplify and reinvent things…which also takes a lot of thought and work.  Which is also a part of why I’m dropping the English stuff.

Anyway.  That’s a bit of what’s going on.  Lots of change, much for good but it’s all still change nonetheless.  And now I need to get going on daily life during spring break.

Good grief, I could use another week.

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February 24, 2012 · 6:56 am

Um well, oops. Busy week.

It’s been one of those weeks where I’m running around frantically and it’s not going to get better over the weekend.  All good stuff, mind you, but it’s still…crazy times, my friends, crazy times.

Barring nasty hard rain tomorrow (Saturday), Mocha and I will be off to a small horse show at Mt. Hood Equestrian Center.  Now this is the venue of her first show, and I’m hoping that she doesn’t turn into the same screaming maniac she was then.  I don’t think she will, but she definitely knows something’s up.  Of course, my spending about an hour carefully trimming up her fuzzy legs and spending extra time on grooming probably is a dead giveaway to a smart and sensitive horse.  All I know is that she gave me all the cues of “somewhat on the muscle, ready to work hard” yesterday while tacking up…quiet, coiled, arching her neck thoughtfully while I got her ready.  The work was very much the same, with a lot of eager anticipating of cues, good rollbacks, lots of energy.  My back is now up to tolerating a good solid fifty minute ride, and she was still full of pep at the end of a rather aggressive schooling session, including some very nice two-tracking at the jog.

But.  On the muscle, for sure.  I ever compete that horse for more than one or two shows a year, and the sting that’s always lurking slightly below the surface is gonna come out.  No doubt about it.  She likes the challenge of schooling and hard working, and I just wish I was a better rider so as to push her a little bit more.  Work though I can, I’m not always at my best with the timing and that’s what we need.

School stuff has been full of the intensive small group and one-on-one work I tend to do well.  I’m hopeful that I’m seeing some progress with some of my tougher kids…maybe a breakthrough has been made.  I sure hope so.

Sped law conference today.  First special ed-oriented workshop I’ve been able to go to for several years, and I’m quietly excited about that.

It’s also been the case that I need to choose between blogging and eking out a few moments for Netwalker Uprising rewrites.  Editor handed me a big rewrite assignment, with the plea “please do rewrite this, it deserves it and you can so do it.”  So I am.  And what’s coming out of it is also clarifying some things for Netwalk’s Children.  Right now, looks like that will be taking longer to come out, and The Netwalk Sequence publication timeline needs to be pushed out a bit.  Oh well, it’s what’s needed.

So conference today, horse show tomorrow (weather depending), ballet and possibly skiing on Sunday.  Then back to the regular spin of work.

Not exactly quiet times here.  Onward!

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February 13, 2012 · 7:48 am

February doldrums

Every year I seem to forget that February is a grim and dreary month.  Doesn’t matter about the number of bluebird ski days I get, February is still grim and dreary.  I get blindsided by IEPs at work, the kids are sinking into midyear grumpiness and behaviors and start blowing out, there’s usually at least one house/car/health issue and….stuff.

February.  Yuck.

This year, too, instead of taking a quick trip to the Tri-Cities for Radcon, I’m staying home.  It’s a good thing I had already planned to do this because I discovered that as union vice president, I need to run an election and the two days I would have been gone for Radcon would have interfered majorly with it.  There’s a major rally planned at the State Capitol for President’s Day and I need to go to it.  I have a certification test to prepare for.  I have an e-book MS to prep for.  IOW, while Radcon would have been a welcome sanity break, it would have piled on the stress in spades.  I would have needed to cancel and felt awful about it.

Not that this particular upcoming three-day weekend will be much of a break (see election, see paperwork, see certification test, see rally).  But at least I’ll get in skiing, I won’t be up late and doing panels, and I’ll get in more time working on the writing stuff.

Sometimes stress reduction is in the small stuff.  And this is one of those times.

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February 4, 2012 · 9:22 pm

A busy day and horsey picspam

I ended up getting a lot of stuff done today…well, really, it was both me and DH.

Started out with taking the ORELA Multiple Subjects III test…sure was glad I signed up for one test at a time as I took my time getting through it and I didn’t feel the pressure of those taking both tests.  An interesting experience, especially since I used a lot of the strategies I tell my students to use during high-stakes testing.

Ahem.  They work.  ‘Nuff said.

Then met a friend to pick up the ski bag left at school, then joined DH to go up the Mountain and deal with rental stuff.  Physical labor, just enough to get a good workout.  We did some shopping in Sandy, then went to the barn where I put horsey through her paces.

G thinks it’s too warm for the horses to wear their winter blankets and I forgot Mocha’s spring sheet.  That was okay as she had plenty of loft in her hair coat and our work today wasn’t enough to get her sweaty.  For one thing, my back is sore and we’re skiing tomorrow.  For another, she’s still getting her back muscles in shape after the intermittent riding of the past six weeks.  Got to build her topline back up.

But hey, DH got some good pictures, including some incredible rollback shots.

Here, she’s coming into the stop.

 

 

 

 

 

And here, she’s rolled back and is heading the other direction.  These were done early on, because she was the Queen of Sluggery, and I wanted to wake her up a little.

 

 

 

So, okay, that worked.  I got some nice trot work out of her (perfect for my back as posting trot actually helps with the strained ligament).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eventually we did some good lateral work, I got to the bottom of the tightness she’d been showing, and we had some nice, relaxed loose-rein riding with the head down.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After that we went outside.  Mocha had a nice little amble until we reached the corner of the far tree field, where some workers were planting a new set of trees.  She had to Get Looky about it, but in true alpha mare fashion, she moved toward the Scary Thing to get a good look at it.  Too bad DH didn’t get any pictures of that because I think they would have been good.

Anyway, she looked good and hard, got the situation resolved in her own mind, so we headed back.  Spent some time walking over a big fallen tree limb to expose her to natural obstacles, then groomed her and put her up.  Did some more shopping on the way home.

A very nice springy winter day in Western Oregon.  Lots of bright, clear light.  However, we’ve been here before.  Things can change very quickly……

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January 24, 2012 · 7:57 am

Every teacher’s fantasy

I don’t think there’s a teacher I’ve ever known who doesn’t have this fantasy.

It’s not about the perfect class or the perfect principal (although those are often secondary fantasies).

It’s about starting my own school.  You know, the one where you and your bestest teacher friends who of course are the BESTEST TEACHERS EVAR find the funding and the facility to set up the ideal program.   We all have this dream, even the most jaded, burned-out twenty-seven-year-veteran-clinging-by-her-fingertips-to-qualify-for-pension-status.  Sit in the faculty room long enough and bits and pieces of the dream surface.

“You know, if I could only get these resources, wouldn’t it be cool to try this.”

“I’d love to do this, but the class schedule/pacing guide/district curriculum/principal/director of curriculum and instruction/setup/whatever else exists to impede innovation doesn’t allow it.”

“We don’t have enough time to do X, and we need to spend more time doing Y.”

Off-site, in secluded restaurants or people’s homes, wherever it’s safe to talk without administration present, more details surface.  Like I said, every teacher has the seed of what the perfect program would be somewhere in their brain.  The picture they have generally is populated with the perfect students, it’s always sunny, and bird songs fill the air.

(so why do images from the creepy Red Room scenes in Twin Peaks keep whispering through my brain?)

I have that dream as well.  A special ed super-tutorial service, incorporating basic academics with horse therapy, focused on kids with learning disabilities, ADHD, autism, and mild emotional issues.  An hour of academics followed by horse time, with a lot of groundwork.  LOTS of groundwork.  Maybe incorporate a little bit of mildly spoiled horse rehab where the rehab doesn’t involve dangerous behaviors, just pushy horses who need a tuneup in manners and that would be a challenge for more skilled kids as you go through the skill development progress.

It’s not likely to happen.  It requires the right combination of insurance, customer base, and facility.  I’m pretty dang sure the customer base doesn’t exist where I live now, and I couldn’t afford to move and go through what is needed to set up a program like this in the places where the customer base is.  Additionally, I’d want to work with kids who wouldn’t have the money to pay for the service…which means flogging a non-profit.

Lots of legal and business impediments.

But that doesn’t mean that the idea doesn’t still linger in the brain.  Occasionally I take the dream out and play with it for an hour or so, thinking over structure and process.

Then I pack it away.  Like I said, not likely to happen.

It is a nice little dream, though.

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January 10, 2012 · 7:47 am

Sliding back into the groove

It’s surprising how quickly some things can change, almost overnight.  I’ve gone from being completely blocked on writing and professional fronts, flailing about to find solutions to–what is probably making me feel best of all–the ability to be creative again.  Funny how that works.

It’s not that things have magically improved in my work life, which is the biggest negative  at the moment.  Right now everything is conspiring to make this the craziest, most twisted and positively most awful year I’ve ever had in this job.  I got slammed with a couple of things yesterday that, if I’d been hit with them sooner in the year, would have either sent me out the door screaming or dictated a resignation letter.  Instead, I buried my head in my hands for a moment, took a deep breath, then said, “Okay.  What next?  What else can happen that will make this year worse?”

(Because trust me.  This year really is the sum of every bad teaching experience I’ve had on an individual event basis all wrapped together.  I have no illusions that the universe will stop dealing me crazy cards.  Dear Universe: I GET IT.  MESSAGE IS RECEIVED.  I’M WORKING ON IT. KTHXBYE.)

Is the turnaround because I’ve come to a point of no return?  Or is it because I’m finally seeing my way out of things?  I don’t know.  I do know I bottomed out a bit over the weekend, thanks to the utter misery of this damn cold added to whatever is going on with my gut, and then started clawing my way out of it.  I made some decisions and took some actions.  I dumped a bit of the physical chaos in my home office and started making lists and a schedule.  It’s amazing how rewarding the act of being able to cross off things on a list can be.  It’s amazing how forcing yourself to impose structure, to take the time away from the crazy din of twenty different tasks that SHOULD BE DONE INSTEAD OF IMPOSING STRUCTURE and making that structure happen instead simplifies life.  How much the little structural things end up solving all the other tasks.

So yesterday morning I was able to be creative.  I spent the morning writing time productively crafting worldbuilding outlines and plans for Netwalk’s Children.  I think this novella might end up being the best piece in The Netwalk Sequence yet, just because I’m finally able to articulate some of the core issues that have been slinking around undercover about the whole damn thing for so many years.  We shall see if my writing is able to stand up to the ideas.  I know how when I wrote something significantly affects the quality of the story, and the sad fact of much of the Netwalk stuff is that it has not been written in sequential order.  It’s been bits and pieces pulled here and there, and even deft rewriting can’t cover up the differences in craft, at least not to my eye.

And I channeled my inner Sarah Stephens.  I know that character very well, god knows I’ve lived with her for twenty-three years.  I still don’t know all of her life and the things that twisted her into the brilliant but manipulative bitch she became in Netwalk and later stories.  But I know what the initial twist was, her ultimate soul-searching gut check that damned near killed her.  And occasionally it’s helpful to pull on aspects of that personality to help me get through the day (like, say, last night’s snark.  Which was more about work than about the rejection letter.  I can be very good at displacement).  Sarah is a construct but she’s a useful construct for those moments when it’s damn the revolution, bring on the apocalypse.

That doesn’t mean there won’t be things that won’t utterly shred my soul and bring me to my knees.  I know that.  There’s no way escaping how some deaths will eventually do that to me.  One death will do that for certain and is statistically likely to happen before mine (Mocha).  The other is a statistical probability but one of those things that you never know (DH) who goes first (and will definitely shred me to pieces), and the other (DS) would be a tragedy.  Those things just are.

So yesterday was a day for blowing up logjams and getting things done.  For moving on issues I needed to clear out of my head, and facing new obstacles with a grin.  I’m not quite up to a Rolex 4-star cross country course when it comes to the crazies, but it’s getting there.

I know where I’m going.  How that path happens, I don’t know.  But the way is starting to clear.

And meanwhile, it’s off for more plot noodling on Netwalk’s Children.  Oooh, I can hardly wait to start writing this one now!

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